31 Aug 2020
Announcement summary:
- Further details, including the purpose of key opportunities, who they’re for, relevant timeframes and a funding calendar.
- We’ll be offering new and revised or re-purposed opportunities – including some we had to suspend while we focused on our COVID-19 emergency response.
- Two key opportunities: Annual Arts Grants (to support annual planning and significant projects/events) and Ngā Toi ā Rohe – Arts in the Regions Fund (supports regional and community arts infrastructure).
- We’re increasing the number of Arts Grants rounds while limiting the number of applications each round, to manage demand and budget and speed up decision-making timeframes.
Media release: 10 July 2020
Following its announcement on Friday 3 July, Creative New Zealand can now provide more details about its COVID-19-driven investment plan for the next 12 months, ahead of August openings.
The programme is designed to be flexible in an uncertain environment, while offering support and funding across the arts community as it builds its resilience and adapts to new circumstances. A number of these opportunities – for individual artists, arts practitioners, arts groups and arts organisations – will open on Monday 3 August, with others to follow.
The programme, consistent with the organisation’s investment, ngā toi Māori and Pacific arts strategies, includes investment in critical core arts sector infrastructure and new and revised or re-purposed, opportunities. Two of these opportunities are the previously announced Annual Arts Grants (to support annual planning and significant projects/events) and Ngā Toi ā Rohe – Arts in the Regions Fund (supports regional and community arts infrastructure). These funds had to be suspended earlier in the year for Creative New Zealand to focus on its COVID-19 emergency response.
“We appreciate the arts community will be eager to understand our direction and what’s being offered through this programme as we fine-tune the details. We have taken the approach of providing as much detail as we can about these new and adapted opportunities ahead of them opening,” says Creative New Zealand Chief Executive Stephen Wainwright.
“We’ll be offering many of the funds and ‘special opportunities’ we had to suspend while we focused on our COVID-19 emergency response, including a number that align with our Māori and Pacific arts strategies,” says Stephen.
Today Creative New Zealand can confirm:
- further details on its 12-month programme, including the purpose of each opportunity, who they’re for and relevant timeframes (snapshots at end of this release)
- a 12-month funding calendar (pdf 71KB) to give the arts community visibility over what’s coming up and to support their planning
- upcoming online hui to engage with Creative New Zealand about these opportunities.
Today’s announcement includes information on an adapted contestable Arts Grants programme for short-term arts projects, to best manage demand while also improving the experience for applicants.
“We’re sympathetic to everyone who applies unsuccessfully for what is contestable funding from a limited budget. We regularly receive many more applications that meet our criteria than we are able to fund, and a decline is not necessarily a reflection of the quality or value of an application,” says Arts Development Senior Manager Cath Cardiff.
Creative New Zealand will be engaging with the arts community on the programme over the coming weeks and months, with the first online hui kicking off with a live Q&A at 11am Tuesday 14 July, in partnership with PANNZ and Auckland Live. this will be followed by an initial Zui (Zoom hui) with the toi Māori community on Friday 17 July at 11am, and an initial Zono (Zoom fono) with the Pacific arts community next Thursday 16 July at 11am.
Last week the organisation confirmed it intends to devote the additional $25 million in new money announced by the Government in May to this 12-month programme. This will be in addition to Creative New Zealand’s annual investment, which will be confirmed by the Arts Council at the end of August as part of finalising its 2020/21 budget (this is done every year in August).
By this time, Creative New Zealand expects to have further clarity on its Lotteries funding (which accounts for two-thirds of its annual income) and have a better understanding of its role in supporting aspects of the Government’s $175 million wider arts and music recovery package. The Arts Council will also publish a short document with financial information setting out its 2020/21 plans.
“We appreciate that things have been moving extremely quickly and there is a lot of interest in understanding both what Creative New Zealand is doing and the Government’s broader COVID-19 response. We hope this document will provide some clarity,” says Stephen.
Cath continues: “We’re working on further support for our investment clients and we’re also reviewing and re-purposing our international programme, which includes exploring virtual market development and capability building. We’ll update the sector in August on our plans.”
Today, Friday 10 July, Creative New Zealand is notifying final results of its Arts Continuity Grants and Emergency Relief Grants – which have been a significant part of its $29 million Emergency Response Package. The organisation intends to share deeper reflections and learnings from this first phase of its response in the coming months.
Questions about the COVID-19-driven investment plan for the next 12 months? Read our Frequently Asked Questions (pdf 737KB)
Funding queries: funding@creativenz.govt.nz
Media queries: jasmyne.chung@creativenz.govt.nz; 027 838 8868
Snapshots of key opportunities
Arts Grants
Amount funded: From $5,000 to $75,000 per application
Who it is for: Individual artists, arts practitioners, arts groups and arts organisations, excluding organisations in the Toi Uru Kahikatea or Toi Tōtara Haemata investment programmes.
Snapshot:
- Arts Grants offer short-term project funding for New Zealand artists, arts practitioners and arts organisations. This contestable funding continues to support more sustainable careers, encourage innovation and the development of arts practice, and provide opportunities for diverse communities to access the arts. We’ll provide detailed eligibility criteria when the first Arts Grants round opens on 3 August.
- We’ve adapted our regular Arts Grants programme and will process more Arts Grants applications within 12 months than we have in previous years, and with a bigger budget but, based on recent demand for our contestable funding, we know it still won’t be enough to meet demand.
- We’ve spread the opportunity to apply across more rounds, to provide applicants more flexibility in choosing when they can apply and to help us manage the demand. We’ll also maintain the shorter decision-making process we introduced in our initial emergency COVID-19 response.
- The ‘new-look’ Arts Grants will:
- provide eight rounds between August 2020 and June 2021
- accept a maximum of two applications from one applicant across the eight rounds (applicants can only submit one application in any round)
- have shorter decision-making timeframes than previously offered in Arts Grants – with notifications three weeks after the closing date
- be a continuous process, with one round opening as another closes in most instances
- in order to manage the demand and our budget we will be introducing a limit of up to 200 applications able to be submitted for each round (a total of 1,600 applications can be submitted across all eight rounds)
Annual Art Grants
Amount funded: Up to $150,000 per application
Who it is for: Individual artists, arts practitioners and arts organisations, excluding organisations in the Toi Uru Kahikatea or Toi Tōtara Haemata investment programmes (we’ll provide detailed eligibility criteria when the first Arts Grants round opens on 3 August).
Snapshot:
- Annual Arts Grants are a new part of the contestable Arts Grants programme and align with the features of our Investment Strategy. Annual Arts Grants provide flexible options for arts organisations and individual artists seeking more certainty of support for their projects and over a longer timeframe.
- Annual Arts Grants funding supports eligible artists, arts practitioners and arts organisations to:
- present a regular or continuous programme of activity over a 12 month period AND/OR
- produce or present a significant event or project.
- We announced Annual Arts Grants earlier in 2020, as an opportunity to support eligible individuals, groups and organisations to plan their activity and have longer-term security, as well as reduce the number of applications they must prepare and submit in any one year. The opportunity wasn’t opened as we had to turn our attention to our COVID-19 emergency response, so we’re excited to re-introduce it.
- To be eligible to apply for an Annual Arts Grant you must be an artist, arts practitioner or arts organisation that:
- meets the general Arts Grants eligibility criteria
- in the three calendar years 2017-2019 you must have:
- received at least four grants from Creative New Zealand’s contestable funding programmes (yet to be specified) which have been evaluated as met or exceeded expectations OR
- received funding through our Toi Tōtara or Toi Uru Kahikatea Investment programmes but are no longer receiving this funding.
- In addition, for this first year of Annual Arts Grants, the nine organisations that submitted an Expression of Interest in March 2020 to take part in our developmental programme Te Puāwaitanga are also eligible to apply.
Ngā Toi ā Rohe – Arts in the Regions Fund 2020
Amount funded: Up to $150,000 per application
Who it is for: Local organisations (eg arts organisation, iwi, hapū; local or regional authority; arts development agency or other presenters, such as marae, local venues, galleries, libraries, community and private trusts, regional arts development agency). Investment clients can only apply if they are located outside Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
Snapshot:
- The purpose of Ngā Toi ā Rohe – Arts in the Regions Fund is to incentivise local and regional stakeholder investment in the development and presentation of local arts activity outside the main centres (Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch).
- This is a new opportunity that we launched earlier in the year but had to suspend, together with other funding opportunities, while we focused on our COVID-19 emergency response. We’re thrilled to be able to reintroduce this fund and provide additional support for the arts in the regions.
- The fund aims to:
- increase investment in the arts by local and regional partners
- develop high-quality arts by, with and for local and regional communities
- increase engagement (attendance and/or participation) in high-quality arts experiences by local and regional communities outside the main centres.
- Applications for projects must:
- focus on collaborative, high-quality new work or high-quality arts experiences by, with and/or for the local community
- provide evidence of new investment in the project by local stakeholders
- include authentic engagement with the community as part of the project eg consultation, research, delivery.
- Projects need to start after 27 November 2020 and be completed by 27 November 2021.
- Applicants can only submit one application.
- Creative New Zealand’s Tōtara and Kahikatea investment clients (outside of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch) can also apply and be involved in a project providing that the project is new and not included in their annual programme, as agreed and supported by Creative New Zealand.
Adaptation Fund
Amount funded: No set amount
Who: Organisations in the Toi Uru Kahikatea or Toi Tōtara Haemata investment programmes.
Snapshot:
- The newly established Adaptation Fund is designed to support transformation or significant development to an organisation’s business model and/or artistic practice.
- The purpose of the fund is to encourage new ways of working within changed environments and to support new and adapted organisational models in response to the opportunities presented by COVID-19.
- We are interested in receiving proposals that focus on a re-thinking of organisational systems and processes and the adoption and deployment of digital technologies and solutions. This can include new ways of engaging with audiences and participants. For example:
- Increasing digital literacy, the digitisation of analogue content and the use of digital technologies to make work and distribute it.
- The transformation of organisational models.
- Increased public access to the arts via the use of digital technologies and solutions.
- Projects must be delivered within the 2021 calendar year.
Capability Fund
Amount funded: Up to $30,000 per application
Who it is for: Organisations in the Toi Uru Kahikatea or Toi Tōtara Haemata investment programmes; the nine organisations that submitted an Expression of Interest in March 2020 to take part in our developmental programme Te Puāwaitanga are also eligible to apply.
Snapshot:
- The newly established Capability Fund is to support organisations to address their development priorities in 2021 to increase the sustainability of their business in response to COVID-19. Organisations can apply for costs up to $30k including consultancy and training fees towards increasing their capability in critical areas such as governance, risk management, business continuity, audience or community engagement, income diversification and financial planning.
- Organisations can only make one application for capability support; either to the Capability Fund or as part of their application to the Adaptation Fund.
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